


Night Terrors

by Liv Campbell (perdikitti), William Alexander (zannyvix)



Series: Bad Blood [2]
Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs, Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: Backstory, Blood and Gore, Comfort, Domestic Violence, Dreams and Nightmares, Fear, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2329802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perdikitti/pseuds/Liv%20Campbell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/zannyvix/pseuds/William%20Alexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking their newest charge back to Aspen Creek isn't the easiest of journeys, especially when the young wolf isn't sleeping well with with full moon a few days off. Bran's hied off to scout the lay of the land ahead of them, leaving Samuel to deal with the brand new wolf himself, and offer what help he can. Set in the early to mid 1860s, during the Civil War, and written partially from Samuel's point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Terrors

**Author's Note:**

> Samuel, Bran, and Charles, along with the Mercyverse concepts and mythos, are not mine. They belong to Patricia Briggs, and all I'm doing is dabbling in her universe. Original characters mentioned within are my creations, or are (with permission) based on concepts put forth by Perdikitti. I hadn't intended to continue the earlier work, but my characters had other ideas and wanted more backstory! Any errors in translation are purely mine. Perdikitti helped immensely with the plotting, pacing, and editing on this.

He was six. Six years old again, helpless and petrified, curled up in a tight ball on the floor beside the bed while his mother chanted. Her voice had taken on a nasal, sing-song quality in a language he did not speak, and was not allowed to learn. The forbidden sounds made him quake almost as much as the red rivulet that meandered across the polished wood floor toward his bare feet, and the slow, awful sounds of blade in flesh. He didn't want to look up and see the ruin of the corpse that had once belonged to Rosa, his favorite nursemaid. Rosa who looked after him, who tutored him in Castilian Spanish and snuck him sweets from the kitchen, and whose only fault was bringing him to see his mother.

He knew if he looked up, he would see her dead brown eyes staring at nothing. The rug she lay on was sodden with blood. His mother ignored him, intent on her task. She had broken the vanity mirror and used a shard of it to slit Rosa's throat, and now she used the sharp glass to peel away the dead woman's skin a finger length at a time, careful to keep it whole. She needed the skin intact for her purposes. The boy did not want to look, did not want to see it again, but his eyes raised of their own volition to take in the grisly scene. Gore coated his mother's arms from wrist to elbow and spattered her white blouse, but still she chanted and cut while her son shivered and huddled as far from her as he could get.

The boy knew what came next. He had relived it over and over again. His mother's chanting rang harsh in his ears. He wanted to press his hands over them to shut it out, to squeeze his eyes closed and wish the horror away, but he could no more stop it now than when it happened in truth. She was only half done with her awful task when the door of her chamber burst open to admit _Don_ Alejandro in a cloud of fury. As horrible as his mother could be, his father was worse.

"Worthless _whore_ ," the tall, golden skinned man snarled in Spanish, terrible in his rage. "What have you done?"

"Nearly freed myself of _you_!" She growled back in kind, strange golden eyes flashing as she leapt to her feet. She clutched the bloodied piece of mirror in her gore coated fist, blood dripping to the floor. "I’m taking the son you forced on me and leaving this place. Come closer and I'll gut you!"

He roared in anger, the awful sound filling the small room as he leapt at her. The boy’s mother slashed at his father with her improvised blade, opening a deep cut on his chest, but it did not stop him. He deflected the next blow with a sweep of his arm and caught her by the throat. The piece of glass fell to the floor, landing on the rug with a dull thump. The boy held back a whimper as he watched his father lift his mother with a single hand. She had wrapped her fingers around his wrist in a vain attempt to stop him from throttling her.

“If not for the child that grows strong in your belly, I would kill you now,” Alejandro hissed. “Troublesome woman. See how you like living with no servants to tend you. You’ll not see your son again. I cannot trust you with him.” His hard eyes, cold and green as chips of emerald, found the boy where he cowered, and forced the child to look away. He could never meet his father’s gaze, not even in dreams or memories.

His father dropped her abruptly so she lay gasping at his feet, her tawny skinned face reddened with the effort, and dark bruises already forming on her throat. Her strange golden eyes found her son’s, and he swallowed past a mouth gone dry as sand. He watched her hand close over the glass knife.

 _“Hágoónee’,”_ she murmured, the intensity of her gaze boring into him. It had not been until much, much later that he realized this had been her way of saying goodbye. In one swift movement, she stabbed the broken shard deep into her own belly. The boy’s mother turned a bloody smile on Don Alejandro and let him see what she had done. Again he roared, though this time there was denial and frustration in his rage.

The boy watched his father drop to his knees and tear open her clothes like paper, trying to stem the flow of blood. She wasn’t like him, though. The wound did not knit itself closed under his hands. Her life’s blood joined Rosa’s to pool and ooze across the floor. He scrunched his toes to keep from touching the rivulet nearest him and listened to the man curse roundly in Spanish. His mother’s body shuddered one last time, and then she went still, her breath escaping in a quiet sigh. It was the most peaceful he had ever seen her.

“What did she tell you? What did she say?” His father’s growl made him jerk his head up, terror making his heart race. His father’s eyes shone pure gold, lit from within by candles the boy could not see.

He opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came out. He didn’t know what his mother had said. His older self urged the younger to say something, anything to placate the monster wearing a man’s form who glared at him, but he was as frozen and powerless now as he had been then. His father gathered himself to his feet with inhuman grace, filling the small room with the muscular bulk of his shoulders as he stalked closer and closer.

A whimper escaped him, and the boy cringed back. There was nowhere for him to go, trapped as he was between the narrow bed and the wall. Even if he tried to bolt, his father was faster, and running would only make the beating worse.

“ _What_ did she _say?_ ” His father’s fist closed on his shirt and pulled him effortlessly upright. “Guillermo, answer me,” the man demanded.

“P-please, I-I don’t--”

It was the wrong answer. An open hand connected with his face, snapping his head around. The sting of the slap made him gasp in pain and shock.

“What did your whore of a mother tell you?” his father growled in his ear, and slapped him again. He knew now that the man had been gentle with him, though at the time the beating had seemed to go on and on. None of the blows that landed broke his fragile young limbs, though one strike set his nose bleeding and a heavy ring cut his lip. The boy was reduced to sobbing, pleading that he hadn’t understood, wasn’t allowed to understand the words she used.

The blows stopped as suddenly as they began. His father gathered him into his arms, shushing his cries. “Why, Guillermo, why do you make me do these things?” he sighed, carrying the boy bruised and bleeding through the gore that was all that was left of his mother and his nurse. “If you would just answer my questions, would do as I say when I say, none of this would happen.”

Cradled to his father’s chest, the starched linen shirt stiff against his bruised and aching cheek, the boy shuddered. “I’m sorry, _papí,_ ” he mumbled thickly in Spanish. “Forgive me.”

“Shh.” His father wet a cloth in the basin on the ruined vanity. “Do not worry, Guillermo. I will never let harm come to you again.”

The cloth touched his face, and pain flared again, but this time it felt real rather than remembered. He came back to himself with a gasp, staring wild eyed for familiar landmarks to anchor himself, but there was nothing but a rude camp in the sagebrush, the embers of the fire burning low. Remnants of dream-fogged sleep still clung to his awareness as Bilagaana pushed upright and buried his face in his hands.

~~~~~~

The desert night was deep and clear, the embers of their campfire not enough to dim the glimmering stars overhead. Samuel sat and watched them. Seasons passed, years turned, friends came and went, but the stars stayed the same. Sometimes he was glad of that consistency, and other times not. It helped when things were unsettled, though. A soft whimper pulled his gaze off the distant stars to one of his traveling companions. The boy was dreaming again. Samuel smelled the fear that rolled off the new wolf, even in his sleep. Another nightmare, then. Given how the youth had been raised, and the violence of his Change, it was hardly surprising his sleep was troubled.

The boy finally gasped himself awake, and Bilagaana sat up, trembling with leftover emotions. Fear, anger, and the bitterness of hatred slowly faded. Samuel watched him scrub his hands over his face. Across the camp, he heard Charles’ breathing change, and knew his brother was awake, too. The other wolf made no attempt to move from his bedroll, though. Samuel let out a breath that was not quite a sigh and moved until he could touch the new wolf’s shoulder. Bran had told him to watch out for the boy. Bilagaana flinched from the contact as if Samuel had struck him, jerking away.

Haunted green eyes met Samuel’s gaze, glowing brighter from the wolf than the dim firelight. He looked away before the older wolf did. “Another nightmare?” the sandy haired man asked.

“Sorry,” Biligaana rasped, staring at the dusty ground. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t. It’s my watch anyway.” Samuel reached one long arm out to poke a stick into the embers of the fire, stirring the coals. “Da can ward your sleep when we reach Aspen Creek.”

“What does that mean?” the younger man asked. He should have known more. His father had been a werewolf, an Alpha, but the Spaniard had been brutal and heavy handed even with his children, crazed with age and power.

“He can stop the nightmares,” Samuel murmured.

Bilagaana closed his eyes. “I would like that,” he mumbled. “Not to dream these things anymore.”

Samuel nodded and gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze. Bilagaana still reacted oddly to being touched. It had taken him a full two days after Bran had left them to ride ahead to really understand that whenever Samuel moved to touch him, it wasn’t to strike in anger or violence. Charles was more reticent around him, but that was Charles. The boy went wobbly in the knees with barely suppressed fear whenever Charles looked at him too long. Both Samuel and Charles had pointedly ignored it since it served little purpose. Bilagaana had two strikes against him already, with a murderous Alpha for a father and role model, and a mother who had been some sort of native witch. Charles had been reluctant to discuss it even with their Da, saying it wasn’t wise to speak of evil things. It could give them more power. It sounded like something the old man, Charles’ Indian grandfather, would have said.

Samuel shifted from his crouch to sit beside Bilagaana on his borrowed bedroll and the boy leaned on him a little harder. If the boy was going to survive as a wolf, he was going to need all the help he could get. “Time helps, too,” Samuel offered after a moment. “It makes a lot of things easier, and some harder.”

“I don’t understand,” the young man admitted.

“You will,” Samuel promised. He wrinkled his nose after a moment. “I’m sure Bilagaana is a fine name, but it’s quite a mouthful.”

“It isn’t,” Bilagaana replied. “It’s an insult, but it’s better than the name _he_ gave me.”

“Which is?” The other man prompted.

Bilagaana sighed. “Guillermo.” He was learning that balking at questions made them become orders he had to obey, that it was easier to just speak when he knew the answer. It hadn’t been an easy lesson, but it was a necessary one. The boy was too dominant for his own good, and even Samuel’s patient wolf would only take so much defiance before swatting the young man down. There were others in the pack who would be far less tolerant.

“Guillermo.” Samuel tried the syllables, his faint accent making a jumble of the pronunciation. “That’s Spanish for William, isn’t it?”

The boy shrugged one shoulder in response.

“William… Bilagaana… What about Billy?” Samuel mused.

The boy lifted his head. “Billy?” he questioned.

“It’s a nickname for Will, or William,” Samuel explained. “And it sounds a bit like the first syllables of your other name. A new name for a new start.”

“Billy.” The young wolf made a face at him. “Billy is… short for William? English is a very strange language,” he complained. Beside him, Samuel chuckled.

“It can be,” he agreed. “How did you learn it?”

“From listening to the servants talk, and from their children. _He_ insisted we only speak Spanish in his house, but I wanted to learn so I could talk to them. Sometimes I wished I was one of them instead of _his_ son.” There was force behind his words, and he spoke with passion and truth.

“And now you are one of us, instead,” Samuel murmured.

“ _Si_ ,” Bilagaana mumbled. He let out a breath and scrubbed his hands over his face. “He planned it all. He hoped three, maybe even four of us would make it. If not, he would have a long wait before he could try again. There was a fever a few years ago, brought by a fur trader who passed through. Most of the little ones, they didn’t survive it. Even a few of the older ones and one of his kept women died.”

“He’d done this before.” Samuel’s voice was gentle, and Bilagaana was unused to kindness. Too often any kind word or gesture must have come with hidden barbs for him to react thus. He nodded.

“Some of his wolves were also his children. He wanted more of us, ties of blood and pack loyalty both.” Bilagaana shuddered and closed his eyes. “He told me he’d waited until I was old enough to survive.”

Samuel’s arm slid around his thin shoulders. He knew a little something about families than ran in packs, and thought better of the boy’s chances. Da would understand what it meant to break away from a monstrous, controlling parent as well. He felt the young wolf relax a little more, some of the anger draining away. He didn’t trust easy, this one, but he could be taught, brought to see reason. Neither Samuel nor his brother or father were anything like the wolves he must have grown up around.

“Monsters,” Samuel said softly, “are born, not made. You’re a wolf now, but you’re not a monster, Billy. The monster’s dead and buried in the wreckage of his own making.”

“I don’t want to be like _him_. He could get people to do things, to take beatings and then apologize. He could make _me_ beg his forgiveness for making him beat me.” A growl trickled from his throat, thin and thready. “He killed those he had no use for. One of his women whelped a baby girl with a clubbed foot, and he wrung the baby’s neck like an unwanted kitten… He may have made me a wolf, but I _won’t_ be like him.” He shivered, though it was not particularly cold. There was dampness on his face. He rubbed it away with his shirtsleeve as quick as he could.

“You won’t,” Samuel agreed. “We will see to that. Da won’t stand for monsters like the Spaniard to play their games on these shores.”

Bilagaana--Billy--lifted his head. “If that’s so, why didn’t you come sooner? He had been doing this for years and years, long before I was ever born.”

Samuel’s chin tilted down, his eyes on the fire and let his expression drift far away. “We didn’t know,” he admitted. “Da’s only just decided someone must police the werewolves in this country, and it’s fallen to him, to us, to contend with wolves like the Spaniard before they do more damage. We didn’t know where he was, though, until a Confederate company transporting prisoners was attacked crossing those lands. One soldier escaped and ran to the nearest town screaming about monsters. The closest Alpha heard, and passed word along. That was three weeks ago. We rode as swiftly as we could, but the Dakota territory is a long way from Texas.”

“Is that where we’re going?” Knowing help would have come sooner, if only someone had told them, must have been a bitter pill to swallow, but Billy would not have survived sixteen years in his father’s house by dwelling too much on what might have been.

“Yes,” Samuel told him. “Aspen Creek isn’t much, just a trading post, but our pack is there.”

“I don’t want a pack,” Billy protested.

“You’ve got to learn what you are first,” Samuel told him. “And how to control the wolf. Da will bind you to the pack when we get to Aspen Creek, so that we can teach you what it really means to be a werewolf.”

Billy frowned. “And when you’re through teaching me?”

“If you don’t want a pack anymore, Da can break the bond and release you to be a lone wolf, but you _will_ learn the rules before that option will ever be on the table.”

The order made the boy hackle, but a stern glance from Samuel had him ducking his head away. Billy kept his eyes on the ground, the way he had been taught, until Samuel’s wolf relaxed. That he had so much control just a few days after his Change was a good sign, too.

“You’ve a bigger problem to worry about before that’s ever a concern for you, though,” Samuel warned him.

“What’s that?” Billy blinked up at him.

“The full moon is in three days.”

Dismay coursed through the younger man, strong enough for Samuel to scent. “I don’t want to be a wolf,” he said.

“You won’t have a choice,” Samuel told him, not unkindly. “When the moon calls, we all change. You can’t ignore her. Don’t worry, though. You’ll be running with us. Neither Charles nor I will let anything happen to you.”

“Charles wants to kill me,” Billy muttered, looking away.

“Because you’re witchborn,” Samuel explained. “It’s dangerous to Change people who have something extra to them. There can be unexpected side effects and consequences.”

“I don’t have any magic. If I did, I would have used it to escape my father long ago,” Billy said.

“You have magic.”

Billy froze as Charles’ deep tones reached him. The other man hadn’t moved from his spot by the fire, but his dark eyes were glittering slits in the dim light. He propped his head on one hand and studied Billy and his brother. The new wolf shivered again and hunched his shoulders at the scrutiny.

“I don’t,” he protested in a smaller voice.

“If Samuel was telling me true, you shift almost as fast as I do. That isn’t natural for a werewolf,” Charles murmured. “Especially not a brand new one. So there’s some magic at work. As to the rest, we’ll see.”

Samuel made a dismissive noise. “Da said to bring him to Aspen Creek, Charles, not scare the pants off him.”

“You know as well as I do how dangerous a witchborn wolf can be,” Charles pointed out. “Better than I, in truth.”

“I do, little brother,” Samuel agreed, smiling faintly. “I do indeed.” Charles snorted.

“I didn’t choose who my parents were,” Billy mumbled, staring at the ground. Samuel’s arm tightened around his shoulders.

“Nor did we,” the older wolf told him. “We can only play the hand we’re dealt.”

“And hope the cards come up in our favor,” Charles added. “Are the two of you going to spend the whole night talking? We should get an early start tomorrow. We still have a long way to go.”

Samuel made himself relax, and pulled away after a moment. Charles was still young by his standards, but his little brother was still very, very dominant and dangerous. If he decided Billy’s continued existence was too much of a threat, he would take matters into his own hands. That would not be tonight, however. “Rest if you can, Billy,” he said. “Charles is right, we’ve still got quite a journey ahead of us. I’ll keep watch.”

“I’ll try,” Billy said quietly. He still smelled like fear, though it was more muted now. Probably just afraid sleep might bring more bad dreams. Billy lay back down, pulling the blanket over himself. Charles grunted and rolled over. Samuel returned to his own bedroll and sat there crosslegged, keeping watch over the camp.

He knew Billy had never wanted to be a wolf, but there was no going back, now. At least he had a chance at living that he wouldn’t have had in the Spaniard’s pack. Don Alejandro had been a violent, immensely controlling person, as man or wolf. There was no way he would have tolerated such defiance in his too-dominant half-breed son. If Bran, Charles, or even Samuel decided to end him, they would be swift about it, not the lingering, torturous punishment and eventual death he could have expected at his father’s hands, had he ever tried to cross the man. Samuel watched Billy shudder and roll over, pulling the blanket tighter around his thin frame.

Tomorrow meant another day of blisters and saddle sores and aching legs for the boy as they rode toward their destination. He might heal like a wolf now, but that wouldn’t spare him the discomfort to his untried rump. He rode like a sack of flour in the saddle, with neither grace nor experience. He would have ample time to learn to ride properly, Samuel mused, if he survived his first years as a wolf. At least he had borne his aches and pains stoically, and never complained of them. Samuel resettled himself for the remainder of his watch. Morning and another day of travel would be on them all too soon.

 

 


End file.
